Up around 9:30 and off to our breakfast, this time with phone in hand as we’ve found out the restaurant has Wi-Fi. Quick breakfast and we’re off on our hike towards the canopy walkway.

Leaving the main village where we are staying we quickly enter the rainforest The path we are walking on, which, although up and down quite a bit, is a very good condition boardwalk; this winds into the rainforest for around 2 miles and, given the humidity and heart seems about 10 miles!

We finally arrive at the canopy walkway, pay our money and we’re heading up into the trees. I’m not quite sure quite what Li expected but she seemed shocked to find it was quite high. About 50m according to the guide book, and at 500m long, they say it’s the longest in the world.

Rebecca loved it! She’s quite light so the rope bridge didn’t move very much as she literally ran across each span. We were both slightly more cautious and walked slowly across, Li pulling some very strange faces at points as the height becomes apparent; although in fairness, William flapping his arms like he’s trying to take off I don’t think helped matters

Back to the chalet, quick pot noodle,and we relaxed out of the heat for an hour or so, then headed off for dinner in the nice boat restaurant.  In the way back we spotted the tapir again plus some monkeys in the tress, so a nice end to the day. All good and the kids were in bed early as well so we relaxed and watched a bit of tv!

Apart from being woken up by William in the night, we’d both had the best night sleep since leaving, these beds are so good!. Up and out by 10:00 as the booking includes breakfast. We take our small trek down to the restaurant but and grab some half decent food, then try, and fail to go for the canopy walk as it turns out they only work half day on Fridays here, some religious praying is need in the afternoon we now understand. 

So, the obvious choice is jump in a boat to the other bank of the river and explore the town. Other than a large hill in the middle of the town there is almost nothing there, so takes about 15 minutes but we did have some odd tasting drinks whilst walking around, plus booked some interesting looking boat ride for the afternoon

Quick lunch in a not so good floating restaurant for lunch and back to the chalet for a 15 minute rest before heading back out for our boat trip.

Didn’t realised that we get two men to guide and drive us in the boat, plus the boat is ours alone! So we head of up river for about 45 minutes seeing some amazing scenery as we go. Most impressive though was the way these guys steered this long boat upon the river, between rocks, up rapids and avoiding everything in their way with amazing skill! One at the back with a small outboard engine, the other at the front with a large stick, I assume the junior of the two, to help push us along as we get dangerously close to rocks and fallen trees!

We get up some good speed at points and it feels like something out of James Bond with the jungle flashing past as we spotted up the river, trees lining both sides and monitor lizards are spotted swimming at one point!  We leave the boat and trek for what was meant to be 15 minutes, that takes about 30, through the undergrowth, no guide at this point bizarrely, until we get to a big natural pool that’s been caved out of the rocks by the river. After a quick, and not very relaxing swim as Rebecca was clamped around my neck like a leach, and we head back. It looks lovely, but to be honest a lot of trekking each way for a quick swim in a fast flowing river with a small child trying to drown you really didn’t do it for me.

Annoyingly, we get back to the boat and in the meantime a loaf more locals have turned up and are playing where our boat is moored on the side of the river; locals have obviously spotted this pool thing is just a pain add well, just don’t mention it to us.  Anyway back along the river, going with the current this time and we have a great trip back. Boat trip, amazing stuff, trek and swimming, not so much!

Given that we’ve now discovered the nearest cash machine is  about an hours drive away, and were low on cash Li came up with the idea of eating in the chalet restaurant as we can charge it to the room and then pay on card, so we did just this and it wasn’t bad at all but not to the same standard as last night by any means, plus about 5 times the cost!

Finally we get back to the chalet and I decide to take Rebecca out for a night time explorer. Torch in hand we leave and were pleasantly surprised, bats, lizards, big old crickets 4 inches long plus something called a Civil Cat, which is some strange looking creature about the size of a large cat, but with a fox style nose, spiked fur pointing backwards and a big bushy tail. Basically a big rat come squirrel, about two foot long! Finally then on the way back the prize of the night, a wild tapir standing eating some melon that someone has left out, I assume for them. At least 5 foot long and standing about 3 foot high it was quite a sight but didn’t seem to care about all the photos people were taking, an impressive end to a great day

Rebecca and I left the hotel to collect the car, with a quick stop off to get some fruit on the way, she loves the selection you get here. Hunting for the car hire place is interesting given its in one of the massive office blocks and nobody had heard of it. Found it by walking every floor and then, obviously, it’s closed! Assumed the bloke was out having a wander and after 30 mins he appeared as if nothing was out of the ordinary which I actually suspect is correct, it’s completely normal here. So with one person in front of us I’m told it’s a 15 mins wait, hence writing this blog from the car hire office.

The fun and games you get when hiring a car never cease to amaze me. Just how many things can they do wrong, firstly as suspected, they didn’t seem to know anything about the car seats, then as also suspected, they wanted to charge us extra when they found some.  Negotiations started and thankfully my prep in the hotel paid off and quickly the bloke backed down. Then off to do the damage check and I’ve never seen it being done so thoroughly, which of course means another 30 mins wasted.  Finally just as we’re about to leave the car seats, that were meant to be delivered to the hotel turn up randomly, which is a bit of luck they had wasted all my time or I would have had to go back for them!

2.5 hours later!!!. And I finally get back to pick Li up who, bless her, had to pack the entire room of our hotel up by herself, which just to be clear is about a 5 minute walk to the car hire place.  Anyway, getting everything in the car was thankfully not too bad as we’d opted for something of a decent size, Honda Civic, and to be honest quite a nice car, although could do with a little more guts under the bonnet.

We commence our journey and the roads are surprisingly very good, and, after a few stops, about 7:30pm we finally arrive in Taman Negara, in the main village; our hotel nowhere to be seen.

 Couple of locals are questioned and of course it’s the one that’s on the other side of the bloody great big river… No roads in sight.  Turns out that you have to get a little taxi boat to the other side, with all your luggage, but given we didn’t know this we end up having to unload everything. Next challenge, the car, there’s nowhere to park it, even though the hotel states parking.. Which is a bit of a joke given that there’s no cars even! Anyway, after some more talking to the locals they convince me that it’s good to use a secure parking that just seems a con to be honest, but it’s all the talk of slashed tyres that wins the argument at the end of the day.

A short lift back on the blokes scooter to the jetty and we’re the whisked away in Golf buggies to the other end of the big complex of chalets with all our luggage.  A change of rooms is in order and sorted out given the distance to the boats, which is quite good.  Dinner was on the other side of the river in a floating restaurant, amazing food including tum yum soup, and really cheap as well, plus a deal with the boat bloke means we can get back afterwards. Air conditioning is a godsend here, stupidly hot but a lovely place, really out in the middle of the jungle, plus quite surprisingly the best beds we’ve had since being away. Finally a good night’s sleep!

A lazy start this morning, everyone woke around 10am but we didn’t get out till after noon!!

We grabbed some brunch at a hawker dining alley way Tony found yesterday. A plate of vegetarian food, chicken meat dish & prawn noodles cost a total of 25 ringits (approx £5). A bargain as Tony says!

We grabbed a cab to the butterfly park (which is the world’s largest butterfly park). The driver had no idea where it was and dropped us off somewhere unhelpful. After a bit of hunting around we located it, Rebecca loved the place and was so besotted with all the different butterflies.  Rebecca was wondering around whispering and pointing out the butterflies. I found the place so hot & humid (dreading our trip to the rain forest if I can’t even cope with a butterfly park).

We decided to go to the bird park afterwards and was told it was 30 minutes walk away. We got a cab which the drivers refused to go on meter and charged us 6 ringits for a minute drive. It was about a 10 minute walk. So we got conned considering it only cost us 10 ringits from our hotel. 

 The bird park was a large open aviary which you could walk through. There lots of birds you could get up close to including parrots, herons, owls and we even got attached by a pelican who was defending its territory. Rebecca fell over then it went for the buggy!! Finally Tony managed to shoo it off.

The taxis seem to be on the ball to rip off the tourist so we made our way out of the park area on foot and grabbed a taxi out in the main roads and on meter!

Later that evening we headed out to the world’s 8th largest shopping mall (Times Exchange) on the monorail to mooch around and was curious to check out their door theme park which had a roller coaster ride inside. 

As it was a last night in KL, we decided to check out the live music in the song kit lounge in the hotel lobby. The singers were covering old 80’s & 90’s songs which was pretty good.

However our drinks bill came back a few ringits too much and Tony being Tony was curious to find out why the price differed from the menu. Turns out the staff have no idea and managed to get a small discount off our bill.

A restless night for William, poor little mite with his chicken pox spots. He is covered all over and is a lot worse than Rebecca when she had them. Rebecca slept in the bed with us and was like an octopus sprawled out. Arms & legs all over the place. After a bad night, I sent Tony out very early to queue up for the tickets at the Petronas towers though I made a pathetic offer to go at 7am this morning.

After an extra hour or so in bed, Tony came back with a selection of fresh fruit (pineapple, jack fruit, papaya, Malaysian apple & water melon). Rebecca loved the Malaysian apple.

We went to the Petronas towers for our 11.30 time slot and the first stage was up to the 42nd floor to the sky bridge. The view was very impressive. Next we went up to the 83rd floor to the observation deck which was rather high. The view made my legs go jelly. 

Afterwards we decided to head back to the hotel to enjoy the pool as the weather was so hot and muggy. Unfortunately William is still recovering from chicken pox and the chlorine in the water was not suitable for his skin. Rebecca enjoyed sploshing in the water with Tony. It was also a bit of shock wearing a normal swimming costume as she is so used to her neoprene suit which was very buoyant. She had to try harder to stay afloat.

We got kicked out of the pool due to thunder & lightning. Tony took some photos of the lightning from our hotel room. There was a burst of torrential rain and it cleared up fairly quickly. 

We headed out in the evening to go hunting for food and found Asia’s largest IT lifestyle center. Basically a big IT place for Tony to indulge! He also picked up a mobile phone portable charger for 60 ringits instead of 120 which is what the markets are trying to sell them for.

After hunting around for food, we opted for s fusion restaurant as they were offering a 20% discount voucher as we walked past earlier and had a variety of food choices. Though they were very reluctant to hand over the discount voucher to Tony when he asked for it when we did come back!

I miscalculated the price of the chilli crab and thought 100 ringits was £10 not almost £20!! Tony was not impressed. We had a lovely meal of traditional Malay dish and noodles.

On the walk back to our hotel, we got a glimpse of the Petronas towers at night.

Started off today at a sensible hour although Li wasn’t cheerful about it given being up half the night with William. His chicken pox is looking pretty bad now and I get the sense that people are starting to cross the street to avoid him, which given that’s where I’m walking as well, is quite annoying as they keep getting in the way!

Anyway back to our good start this morning and we head of slowly towards the aquarium but given the heat and humidity we stop on a regular basis to grab a drink plus a decent breakfast in one of the malls. It’s worth mentioning that KL claims to have some of the biggest shopping malls in Asia and to be honest you can see why, they are enormous and there’s more designer shops than you can ever want to visit in your lifetime

The aquarium was good, not sure why but it seemed to focus a lot on sharks and they do have some pretty big ones. The main feature on the aquarium was a 90m underwater tunnel that Rebecca loved, similar to the one that we found in NZ. She also seems to have found a strange fascination for Rays, which on reflection has been there for a while but we’ve never spotted it. Anyway, the Ray spotting over and following an extensive mince in the gift shop we head out for a wander round one of the main parks in the city

  
KL City Park, as it’s cunningly called, is quite lush and green but given the heat and regular rain it’s not surprising. The key thing it’s through this was our first really good view of the Petronas Twin Tower’s. Extending easy up into the skyline and dwarfing all the other buildings that to be honest, would normally be quite impressive in their own right

  
Rebecca however didn’t have any interest in these marvels of engineering and seemed much more interested in the fact the city park also contains one if biggest playgrounds that you have ever seen!

Lots of swings and climbing frames later, Li gets a sudden rush of blood to the head and we head inside the massive shopping mall that sits below the towers. A quick snack including a milkshake each to cool down followed by some sampling of some massage chairs, seems to do the trick, and we’re off to get some photos of the towers 

One cab ride later and we’re in the middle of KL’s China town, Jalan Petaling, being the main street that everything centres on. Renowned for fake goods we had high expectations of being harassed by everyone we encounter. Expectations were not misplaced, but they didn’t account for my expert negotiating skills with roots based upon a fundamental principle of  “not wanting their rubbish”. That being said Rebecca did leave with a Frozen bag, reduced from RM55 to RM15 (about £2.80) and Li got the first fake bag she’s ever had, which to be honest is such good quality 99% of people would never know, reduced from RM185 to a pricy RM70, about £13, bargain!

Dinner was a mixture of noodles and rice with a load of different meats all very nicely cooked, but the center piece had to be my own personal bbq on the table for some satay sticks.

  
Back to the hotel for, compared to recentlycan early night given it’ll be an early wake-up call to get tickets for the Petronas towers tomorrow

Not looking forward to today at all!

Up and out of our hotel by 9:15, which for us recently is like the middle of the night

We worked out that now we have to pay for three, a cab to the airport was not much difference in cost to the train and a lot less fuss so the journey was quite relaxed.

Air Asia are the Easyjet of Asia it turns out so room for our legs was an optionally extra that Li forgot to book, so with our legs around our shoulders we jetted off for KL

Four hours later and no sleep at all, we negotiated the sights and sounds of Kuala Lumpur International Airport and we’re heading for our hotel in a nice comfy taxi, given that it’s actually cheaper to get than the train!

Our hotel is very posh! Arranged as one of these secret hotel deals so was cheap as well.  Location is right in the main area of KL for all the night markets, bars clubs and general stuff happening, but far enough away, about 5 mins walk, that you can’t hear any of it.

Dinner was an Indian street food restaurant and was excellent. Total cost for everything £8 so very pleased with that as it would be around £50 for what we had in the UK

Very slow start to the day again due to late night with the kids. But the good news is that our favorite dim sum restaurant was still serving so we parked ourselves there for a while and had some great food that even Rebecca really enjoyed.

The aim for the rest of the day, at least in my view, was to get to the electronics market that I recently discovered existed. I’m still not quite sure how after being in Hong Kong now a few times that I didn’t know about this before, but with promises of a whole street of gadget and electronics shops this is something to look forward to.

Our long slow walk started at one end of Nathan Road and headed north towards, our first stop of interest, Cam2, my favorite camera shop in Hong Kong. A couple of quick purchases and we’re off again on our exciting quest.  A lot of mincing around, random shops that hold very little interest for neither Rebecca or I and finally we’re in gadget heaven!

Li took refuge in a McDonalds with the kids and I was left for an hour of bliss with all the gadgets that you can imagine. Unfortunately I don’t really need anything so after what seemed like only five minutes time was up we were already late for dinner with some more of Li’s family.

Had a very good quality Chinese dinner local to our hotel and then back to the room for a little bit of an earlier night than we’ve been having recently, for Rebecca at least, whilst Li did the packing for our flight tomorrow

Once again a later start this morning following a late night, but this time we started as you always should in Hong Kong, with dim sum! Very nice and also pretty cheap as well so everyone is a winner there. Rebecca ate a decent amount and after just a while we were ready to head of towards the markets, which surprisingly we’ve never been to quite a few of before.

Straight up Nathan Road, which is a long walk to be fair, and after a few stops involving spiced pork, other less exciting ones involving children’s clothes and finally we get to the ladies market, which to be honest is just a load of old rubbish for sale, so Li was in heaven.

I managed to distract everyone long enough to get some pretty amazing food in the form of a Japanese for a late lunch, which ended up the bargain of the century at about £12 for two massive plates of sushi, two bowls of noodles plus drinks and curry & rice!

Moving on and we get to the flower market, which is on a really imaginatively named road called “flower market street”. All very nice, and some great orchids but to be honest it basically consists of a lot of Flower shops and not any bargains either, and suddenly we know why we haven’t bothered doing this before.

We continued our trek onto the bird market, Rebecca met a parrot that said “hello”, amongst other animals, which she didn’t seem to find strange at all, but given children’s tv where all the animals speak then maybe this isn’t so surprising. The rest of the bird market was quite small but in fairness had everything you’d expect, lots of birds and Rebecca got to hold some of them as well which was quite nice.

Finally the goldfish market, which is actually quite a bad representation of what they sell given it actually is a lot of shops selling basically everything you can think of from goldfish to $10,000 aquariums. Amazing selection of fish and related gadgets were for sale and even William was almost taking a interest!

Quick Taxi ride back to the waterfront to make the light display for the evening, which actually was quite disappointing having seen it before and the day is almost done.

 Quick time for a few beers in one of the bars overlooking the waterfront, some time to Skype  parents, a few more drinks, and home by a very sensible 11pm!

A slow start to the day, we decided to head back to Disneyland for the 2nd time. We caught up with some of the characters for some photos.

The queues were ridiculous but Tony & I thought we be cheeky and queue separately, alas we got told off. Still we managed to get some group shots with Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse & Goofy. Winnie the Pooh was just Tony & Rebecca. 

Rebecca wanted to go on a couple rides she liked from the first day. So we decided to go for the fast track route for the Winnie the Pooh ride, we got the ticket at 1pm and couldn’t fast track till 6-7pm!! It seemed busier today than Tuesday.  

Tony took her on Space Mountain and William & I waited around taking selfies. She came out a little scared but soon got over it with some toy shopping.

We did a 3D movie which was really cool – though we were a bit taken back by being splashed with water. The 3D effects were very good. Even William found the glasses very tasty to munch.

Rebecca managed to convince me to go on the tea cups with her as she didn’t want daddy. My tummy was turning when I got off.

Finally we also did the parachute ride, guess I am becoming more of a scaredy cat as I get older. Rebecca doesn’t seem to have a fear of heights.

We spent a lot of time on shopping too, Tony even got Rebecca a magic paint brush for the parade so she can change colours of the dancers.

Rebecca came up tops with goodies with a Minnie Mouse dress up set, Minnie Mouse bag & key ring (spotting her favourite character yet?), Disney mug & spoon, Mickey Mouse Plate and more stickers.

We stuck around for the parade & fireworks again. By the time we wrapped up at Disneyland, the kids were shattered.